


You Don't Have to Be Alone

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood and Torture, EXCEPT FOR ONE SCENE, Established Relationship, IT IS NOT GRAPHIC, Kidnapping, M/M, Tony Feels, tony gets tortured
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 12:58:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5929284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He's missing,” Steve's mouth is open, agape at the betrayal he's witnessing. “Tony Stark is missing, and you tell me to not worry?”</p><p>“You should've told us about the vibranium,” Nick Fury returns, swift as the devil. Everything's Steve's fault, isn't it? Hasn't it always been? “We could have protected it.”</p><p>“You would've used it!” Steve is fuming, eyes alight in an unnatural anger. “Do you see? Black Panther told us specifically not to tell you. Besides,” he says bitterly, eyes focusing and blurring. He wonders how long it's been since he's slept. “That's not what they were after.”</p><p>“No?” Fury runs his fingers idly along his table in what seems like a gesture of nonchalance but Steve has only ever seen it as nervousness.</p><p>“They were after Tony,” Steve lets out a breath that seems to take everything from him. “They were after what he can do; what they think he will do to save himself. He will not.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Don't Have to Be Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kiyaar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiyaar/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Better Halves](https://archiveofourown.org/works/706966) by [Kiyaar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiyaar/pseuds/Kiyaar). 



> The longest fic I have ever written. Fun to write, though. Kiyaar is an amazing writer, and I found it difficult to remix her stories (how do you change perfection), and yet, here it is. Enjoy! (This remix is based off Kiyaar's Better Halves, here is a link, go check it out! http://archiveofourown.org/works/706966)

The building is on fire, and it isn't Steve Roger's fault. Okay- maybe it is a little, he could vaguely remember something hitting a fuel cell, but his mind had been consumed by one desperate thought.

 

_Get to him._

 

Steve is good at a great many things. He can whistle and juggle and draw pictures so real you'd think you could touch them. He can also do a double backflip without a spring board. But Steve is also not good at a great many things, and one of them is losing the one person who truly mattered to him. Another one is starting from the beginning.

* * *

 

 

“It's him,” Tony Stark breathes, brown eyes wide and tumultuous with what seemed to be a fierce, bright anger, heavy grief and a yearning sense of nostalgia. “It's- it's really fucking him. I don't believe it.”

For the first time since meeting Nick Fury Tony turns to him and affords him some form of respect. “Can I- I need to run some tests,” he finally gets out, hands poised on the ice that still cakes his feet. He holds the man in the ice like he's afraid he'll break him. “The serum- I don't know. Zombies?” It's the first time he's not been eloquent.

Fury snorts and turns away. “No one in or out of this room,” he barks, and the subordinates scramble to get it done. “No one until he's done, understand?”

Tony still stares. “My dad spent his whole life searching for you,” he tells the man. “And I'm the one who gets to see you. Ironic, isn't it?”

The man doesn't reply, but suddenly all Tony can feel is a burning desire to never be like his father.

* * *

 

“Big man in a suit of armour. Take that off, what are you?” His words are ice, dislike and contempt frozen deep within. Tony Stark recalls his father's words. Steve Rogers was the kindest, gentlest and sweetest man he'd ever met. He was the only good thing he'd ever done.

The man standing before Tony is not kind or sweet or gentle. He is like leftover coffee and the smudge of ink on paper and the cold wind that hits your face when you walk out of the warmth in the winter.

“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist,” the smile he gives him is like razors.

“I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you,” Steve continues, his words are barbs. Any thought that this was the same man his father thought the world of is erased. Tony takes off the wall in his mind and gets ready to play dirty. The atmosphere in the room gets tense. He notices.

“I think I would just cut the wire,” he says, as if explaining to a child how to cross a busy road. Patronising, condescending. Like you would know is added on silently by the glint of his eyes.

“Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”

Tony nearly flinches. The man before him may not be particularly smart or well educated, but he is perceptive. He'd landed directly on one of Tony's weak points within a few hours of meeting him personally. “A hero? Like you?” Tony mocks him, sees his eyes widen and his jaw tense. He notices. “You're a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle!”

The bullets find their impact, they hit him hard and dead centre. He sees the man take an emotional step backward, reach for something to say. He notices and smiles, deadly sharp.

* * *

 

Somewhere along the way, however, the lines between enemy and teammate blurred and became one. Everything from then on was a heavy blend of the two, shouting matches that neither would win, but at the same time listening to each other so that they could.

When Steve takes a heavy hit during another fight and goes down, breath stilling, it is liquid fire that courses through Tony's veins and lends strength to his arm. He would not know why later, why getting to Steve had been so important, so consuming.

He doesn't visit him in the hospital wing. Instead he improves Steve's armour and replaces worn out bits with new tech, new ways to keep him safe. He does not know why.

When Tony is hit with a ray that prevents the suit from functioning while up in the air and plunges into a heavy nosedive that is he is only just able to control, Steve's breath is stuck in his throat. It is sheer desperation that drives him to hitch an unplanned ride on a fighter jet and barely, just barely, catch him. The impact breaks a few of his ribs. He does not mind.

He visits him in the hospital wing, if only to stare at him and make comments about how this could be avoided in the future. But the bruised eyes look at him and evoke sympathy, and eventually he starts to warm up to him, feel the ice thaw. He does not know why.

* * *

 

The lengths they start to go to keep each other safe become extreme. Tony would take hits meant for Steve. Steve would yell at him but do the same in return.

It is one night when Tony is sitting on the roof of the Avengers tower, grateful to be alone for once- no paparazzi or fans or villains trying to invade the United States that things start to change. Steve joins him, silently, sitting next to him and letting his feet dangle off the edge.

“You come here a lot,” he says. It is not a question.

“Yes,” Tony inclines his head to him, marvelling at the way the moonlight would freeze his face. He looks like the Greek hero Achilles in that moment, his hair the colour of spun gold. Tony idly wonders if that would make him Patroclus. “Everywhere else is too...noisy.”

“Your lab is soundproof,” Steve huffs out a gentle laugh.

“You know that's not what I meant,” Tony says, and he does. “Why did you follow me up here?”

Steve watches him out of the corner of his eyes. “Do you want to know why?”

“Not really,” Tony hums. He looks out over the skyline. “But there is something you want.”

Steve's hand is warm on his shoulder. It exerts just enough pressure for Tony to look at him. Steve watches him earnestly. He opens his mouth to say something, his lips form a word. Then he pauses and says somethings else. Tony notices. “Would you like to dance?”

If Tony is surprised by this request, he does not show it. “We don't have any music,” his voice is wistful. It carries throughout the night as sirens ring through the streets of New York.

“We don't need it.”

Tony puts out his hand and Steve pulls him up. “If we fall off, I'm haunting your afterlife forever.”

“That does not seem like a punishment,” Steve winks and Tony laughs.

* * *

 

It is in this fashion that time passes, a heavy daze of loving and being loved in return. Steve shares Tony's bed. Tony learns that Steve likes two lumps of sugar with peppermint tea. What is between the two of them is a dance that Tony is not used to, Steve can tell. He has almost never been looked at the way Steve looks at him, with unguarded and bold affection. He wonders if Tony knows he looks at Steve the same way.

“Tony,” he calls, manoeuvring his way through the workshop. The workshop was unnaturally still, not even the slightest movement or sound could be heard, except for the sound of feet on tile. The air is hot and heavy. “Tony?”

Steve realises that something's wrong before his mind can connect the dots and he immediately pulls the knife he has permanently on his person out of its sheath. The Chinese takeout in his hands drop onto the floor. The workshop was separate from the Avengers tower, top secret and isolated. Here, Tony and him had been working on using vibranium that T'Challa had given them more effectively. Steve's blood runs cold.

He sees the drops of blood on the floor and the chaos in the back room. Chairs and tables were upturned, there was a drill bit stuck in the wall and plaster littered the floor with shards. Steve's mind blanks.

“Tony!” His desperate words echo around the room, small in the face of such silence.

* * *

 

“He's missing,” Steve's mouth is open, agape at the betrayal he's witnessing. “Tony Stark is missing, and you tell me to not worry?”

“You should've told us about the vibranium,” Nick Fury returns, swift as the devil. Everything's Steve's fault, isn't it? Hasn't it always been? “We could have protected it.”

“You would've used it!” Steve is fuming, eyes alight in an unnatural anger. “Do you see? Black Panther told us specifically not to tell you. Besides,” he says bitterly, eyes focusing and blurring. He wonders how long it's been since he's slept. “That's not what they were after.”

“No?” Fury runs his fingers idly along his table in what seems like a gesture of nonchalance but Steve has only ever seen it as nervousness.

“They were after Tony,” Steve lets out a breath that seems to take everything from him. “They were after what he can do; what they think he will do to save himself. He will not.”

“You don't know that.”

“If there is one thing I know for certain,” his voice is deadly quiet, the unnatural stillness before a storm. “It is Tony Stark. You will not hurt him,” he turns to go without having being dismissed. “If you do, I will hurt you.”

“Is that a threat, Rogers?” Fury's sounds like he's ready to sock Steve around the jaw. Steve isn't impressed.

“It is.”

* * *

 

Everything's fuzzy when Tony comes to, blinking his eyes against the harsh light that surrounds him. His head hurts, distant throbbing that reminds him faintly of being hungover. He tries to move, and finds his hands are tied behind his back, to a pole.

Tony rolls his eyes and pulls at the bindings. They've used a coarse rope, thick and scratchy, and the rope has already bit into his hands at some point, leaving his hands red and raw.

He turns away from it and surveys his surroundings. He's in an old and dilapidated building, a faint silvery light streaming through a crack in the ceiling. It's night time, wherever they are. Tony wonders how long he's been out and brings it to about five hours.

Obviously, they want him to build something. Tony had been working on the vibranium when they'd arrived, the spetsnaz agents that had grouped together and stuck him in the neck with a sedative.

Tony hadn't left without putting up a fight, of course, trying to tell Steve that he'd not gone quietly, that he'd been taken. He remembers the drill bit in the wall and smiles.

He doesn't have his old clothes, instead he's wearing a loose cotton shirt and trousers. His arc reactor glows through the material, lighting up a bunch of moths that immediately gravitate towards the light and begin to dance. The air is very cold.

“You going to come out?” He calls, voice rusty and feeling as if there was sand in his throat. “My arms are getting sore.”

In his lifetime, Tony has been taken a lot. He remembers at six, being blindfolded and taken roughly to an outlying field, where they'd contact his father for ransom. Seven, on his birthday, being brought to Budapest. Eight was a boring age, but at nine he'd been taken to England and then to Puerto Rico. At eleven he’d escaped his captors and then walked the twelve or so miles to the nearest police station. After that it just became a game, how fast he could escape, how good the others were. He wonders how long this one would take.

A man comes in about an hour later. He smiles thinly at Tony before undoing his bonds. Tony whimpers and tries to make himself look small. Tony had learnt early on that if you acted like you were so terribly afraid of the big bad wolf the big bad wolf would get cocky. He'd make a mistake. “What do you want?” Tony croaks, not meeting the other's eyes. He shuffles his feet along the floor and tries to make his voice crack.

The man laughs, high pitched and painful. Tony wants nothing more than to remind this man who he is, a hero, an Avenger, one capable of naming every bone in his body and while breaking it at the same time.

The man cuffs him with a zip tie and Tony almost cries at their unprofessionalism. “Where are you taking me?”

The man looks at him. He's got thin lips and a wan complexion, his nose too small and his eyes too big. “Shut up.”

Tony almost laughs.

* * *

 

Steve wants to tear his hair out in frustration as he watches the IT team reconstruct the security camera footage. It is taking too long, and Steve hates it, hates every second that Tony isn't safe and alright and with him.

He's pacing the living room. Behind, Clint is going through military records to match the guns used in the lab and Natasha is helping him.

He notices a stray piece of paper on his desk and picks it up, irrationally angry at this blemish on an otherwise clean desk. “Who put this here?”

Clint looks up. “Must've been some agent,” he says, and turns back to his work.

Steve feels bloated with anger. It wars in him and wins. “Don't they know anything!” He shouts, crumpling the paper and tearing it in half. “What's the point of having them if they don't know proper protocol!”

“Steve,” Clint watches him out of the corner of his eyes. “There's never been a problem with leaving things on desks-”

“THERE'S ALWAYS BEEN A PROBLEM!” He's screaming at the top of his lungs, chest heaving with his rage. “What kind of example is this? Where is the person responsible? Why is there always a mess? Why can’t things just be tidy?”

Clint stands and crosses to the kitchen, leaving Steve to stare at the paper that's now fluttering across the floor with an anger that doesn't dissipate. He returns shortly after and presses something into Steve's hands, something that scalds, and Steve's so surprised he forgets the anger that seems to consume him and stares at it.

“Drink,” Clint says, and Steve's just noticed how tired his voice is. “It's peppermint. With two sugars.”

Steve swallows. “How did you know?” The anger that came all at once leaves as quickly as it had arrived.

“Tony told me,” Clint's voice is gentle. “He means as much to you as to us. Let us help.”

“You aren’t the only one who owes Tony Stark a debt,” Natasha folds her arms across her chest and looks down at the table. “He saved me in Cuba.”

“Look at this sickass specialised hearing aids,” Clint gestures to his ears. “Tony made them for me. They won’t fall out in battle, you see? And they’re merged with the comm lines.”

Steve takes a deep breath, realising that Tony Stark was the glue of the team, no matter how much they tried to pretend that he was not. He kept the team, ironically, sane, with his constant questions and what ifs and his loyalty to the team. He kept them all safe, and, what might be his Achilles heel yet his saving grace, would sacrifice himself to protect them without question.

“Tony is a massive pain in the ass,” Clint gripes, but the ends of his mouth twitch in a sad smile. “But he is Tony, and he is ours.”

Steve stares at him, seeing the fresh lines on his face and the bags under his eyes. Natasha also looks the same, weariness is carried in the way she walks over to them. “You're not alone,” she says, and places a hand on his shoulder. “And Tony can take care of himself.”

Steve drinks to prevent himself from replying in a sudden outburst of words he would not mean.

Clint grins broadly at Natasha when she says that sentence. “You could drop Tony Stark naked in the middle of the desert and he'd fly back out in a jet made of cacti and sand,” he says, and Steve's head jerks up. “Because his ability isn't in the suit, it's in his head. He's probably already hitching a ride on some expensive yacht while we slave away trying to find him.”

Steve smiles at that. “You're right,” he grins, remembering the way Tony would manage to build anything they'd require and then some. “But we still have to find him at all costs.”

“We're with you,” Clint taps his shoulder. “Just you say the word.”

* * *

 

Tony is not hitching a ride on an expensive yacht, no matter how much he'd prefer that alternative. Instead, he's staring into the dark eyes of a scientist who speaks perfect unaccented English. He sounds like a person who'd voice Siri. “It's just an equation, Mister Stark. We want to synthesise it. You will help us,” the scientist smiles at him, a bitter one that reveals teeth as white as his lab coat. “What method should we start with? Electrolysis? What materials?”

“It's patented,” Tony shrugs. He's had this conversation with this scientist for the last three days, and he has the bruises to show for it. “No.”

The scientist's eyebrow twitches, the only sign that he's human. “No?”

“I said no!” Tony slams his fist on the table which startles the guards and the scientist himself. “Who the fuck do you think I am?”

“Take him away,” the scientist holds barely concealed anger. “And initiate Act 435.”

“What's Act 435?” Tony asks fruitlessly.

“You'll see, Mister Stark,” the scientist beams at him. “Then we'll see if you say no again.”

They drown him. Act 435 is drowning and then resuscitation, again and again until even when Tony's on land he doesn't know if he's still trapped beneath an endless amount of water, swirling around him and stealing his breath.

Is this how Steve felt like? Tony thinks, deliriously, in between one session. Pulling at the water as if it'd get him to the surface? He thinks he sees Steve once, in a waterlogged daze, reaching his hand out for Tony and asking him for a dance. He reaches out but he can never touch him- Steve is always too far out yet too near.

They drag him back into his cell after what seems like days.

“Yes?” One of them asks him, his face tilted and his light open in an obscene smile. “Yes?”

“No,” Tony chokes, the only word he has to hold on to. “No. No. No. No. No.”

The man sighs deeply. “What happened to the Tony Stark who'd save his own skin? You've gone soft.”

“No,” Tony says again. “No.”

“Yes,” the man says gently, but it's a mockery of words. “You'll say yes. Eventually. I'd hate to break you, Mister Stark. But if I can't have you, no one can.”

The man turns and leaves. Tony gasps and murmurs in the silence like a senile man, his brain completely screwed up and sideways. He reaches for the blonde man he can see skirting the edges of his vision, and his heart goes wild when he realises he doesn't know this man's name.

He hyperventilates for what seems like hours until his brain staged a coup and placed his body under military law. It seizes control of his bodily functions and orders his hands to unclench and his breathing to stabilise.

After that, he thinks like a machine. The blonde's name, Tony recalls, is Steve. Steve Rogers. Steven Grant Rogers. Captain America. You share his bed. He likes sweet things. He's coming for you. Let him know that you are here. You can trust him. You share his bed. He loves you. You love him He's coming for you. Let him know you are here. How? Let him know you are here. Do you. See? Remember. The light. Close close! The reason why it's no go. The reason why you're not your father. The light. Do you. See?

Tony's body spasms. His body feels too wet and his tongue feels too dry. The world's a yawning gap of a million stars and a moon that swallows his eyes. The memory comes all at once, a moment of clarity he wishes he could hold on to. Clumsily, he pulls a finger up and drags it across the rim of his arc reactor. Clockwise. Counter clockwise. Half clockwise, half counter clockwise. Clockwise.

“Twinkle,” Tony gasps. “Twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.” He stares at the star he can see through the crack in the wall and misses Steve more than he'd ever missed anything.

When he’s done, his whole body slumps and his eyes burn. He thought he could get out of this one, easy as anything, easy as everything he’d always been able to do. His arc reactor holds a tempting way for him to get out, with sheer force, but the logician in him reminded him of the impossibility of such a task. Wait for them, he thinks, and he clings to this hope. They’ll come.

* * *

 

 

 The sound of the alarm blaring through the compound sends Steve bolting out of their bed- he's not ever going to think his- and running down the stairs. Admittedly, he hadn't been sleeping at all, the room too dark without the light of Tony's arc reactor.

“What is it?” He skids into the meeting room, where Fury is wearing the angriest face Steve has ever seen him in before. “What’s wrong?”

“Spetsnaz agents,” Fury stares at the wall. “We reconstructed the data.”

“That’s not the reason for that face, nor the alarm,” Steve attempts to smooth down his hair, and then realises he’s wearing Tony’s too large jumper that fits him just right. He declines to say anything about it. “We guessed it was Spetsnaz from the bullet shells.”

“No,” and now the wrath is tangible in his voice. “That comes from Stark’s bitch refusing to talk to anyone but you, Barton and Romanov. He mentioned the others, but they aren’t here. Who does he think he is?”

“Jarvis is requesting an audience?” Natasha asks, slipping into the room with Barton at her heels. Since Tony had disappeared, Jarvis had been unusually quiet, doing only minor background activity and running trace after trace for Tony. He even simulated how the fight in the workshop had gone down to determine if Tony had gotten hurt. “That’s new.”

“And he’ll only do it if he can control all audio and video surveillance in the room to block out what he deems sensitive information,” Fury crosses his arms and stares deeply at the three of them. “Stark’s hiding something.”

“Because he doesn’t trust you and rightfully so,” Steve meets his stare. “None of us do.”

“And he’ll trust two spies and a once dead man?”

“He trusts his team,” Clint too doesn’t flinch. “You deemed him a liability. You stormed a suspected holding compound with military troops knowing full well if he was in there they’d have killed him rather than let him be taken. And now you’re throwing a tantrum because he doesn’t trust you not to kill him? Give me a break.”

“If he says yes-”

“That’s the thing!” Steve shouts, the veins in his neck standing out.  He takes a step toward Fury, and another, until he’s backed him up to the wall. “He won’t say yes! He’ll never say yes, because whether Tony or you like it, he’s a hero with an undeniable tendency for self-sacrifice. He’ll let whatever makes himself Tony rot away if it means people don’t die because of him. Don’t you see?”

Natasha places a hand on Steve’s back. “Jarvis?” She asks. “We’re coming in.”

“Thank heavens ma’am,” Jarvis replies, always his polite self. “I was beginning to wonder if everyone would ever stop arguing so we can get started on the saving.”

Steve storms into the adjacent room, which he realises belatedly is the room Tony uses for holograms when he’s designing a new machine. The walls are black to allow the picture to stand out, and there’s a dip in the centre for a better ease to the manoeuvring of the images.

Jarvis waits until they were all seated on the foldout chairs before continuing. “Stark Industries is famed for its weaponry,” Jarvis says solemnly, a hint of remorse tinging his words. “It is, after all, what it became when Sir’s parents died.”

“Yes,” Steve says, and here he folds his arms across his chest like a petulant child and huffs to convey the full extent of his displeasure. “I still don’t approve,” he adds, in case you couldn’t tell.

“But that was not always the case,” Jarvis says, and then an image of a complex graph appears in the centre. “As you can clearly see,” which they couldn't, but they nod anyway out of the knowledge to follow the game. “Before Howard Stark died, the amount of search and rescue tech patented and manufactured tripled the weapons. His sole, primary focus even after years and years of nothing was to find you.”

Everyone knows who you is, and this makes an uncomfortable tightness rise in Steve’s chest. “Tony told me,” he clears his throat. “Tony told me everything.”

“No,” Jarvis is sympathetic. “He really didn’t.”

Steve blinks.

“This desperation and guilt of his father was something that Sir grew up with, and it hurt him and emptied out his chest and made him hollow. He filled this void with a vow to never make things only to lose them, and so he has trackers everywhere. He has them in your suits, your guns, your shoes and even the coffee maker, which I still don’t understand.”

“Stark’s been spying on us?” Clint, ironically, sounds betrayed.

“Yes,” Jarvis says firmly. “No. The trackers are more intended as a proof of life and are only activated if someone tampers with them or something is seriously wrong with your body. They even have their own independent energy source to ensure it doesn’t run out.”

“That’s how he knew,” Natasha rubs her face. “I was on a mission in Cuba. Top-secret. I was supposed to be back in two weeks, but I got caught by a bounty hunter. He drugged me up on the drug I was supposed to be containing. Four weeks pass and I’ve had it up to here with ass,” and here she stares at a picture of the trackers that Jarvis had called up.  “Then Stark blew down the front door and helped me dismember that asshole. He said he found me by hacking into SHIELD files.”

“The drugs interfered with your systems and alerted Sir,” if Jarvis was corporeal he would have been nodding. “He needs to save you all.”

“Tony is obsessive and a control freak,” Steve mutters. “He likes to have all his stuff in one place so he knows he can protect it. That’s Tony Stark.”

“Yes,” Jarvis agrees. “And Tony built a tracker into himself.”

This gets everyone’s heads to snap up at the ceiling to stare at the disembodied voice of the AI. “Only he can activate it, and even then it requires passcodes and voice recognition. He built it into his arc reactor. I do not think I have to say that you are not to share this information with anyone other than the Avengers?”

Steve can barely breathe. All he can think about is getting Tony home, getting Tony safe, making sure he’s okay and kissing him and never letting him out of his sight again. If Tony wants Chinese food, Tony better come with him to get it. The anticipation and the want and the need all toll inside him like a church bell. “You don’t,” Steve whispers. “Where is he?”

“He activated it three hours ago,” Jarvis sounds almost relieved. “His coordinates are 60°37'00.7”N 24°23'47.0”E, Helsinki. I’d advise you to hurry, Captain.”

Steve is out of the door instantly, secure in the knowledge that the others were following behind him.

* * *

 

Tony is dragged out of the room he had come to associate as safe by a pair of armed guards. They push him toward the room with the water tank and Tony starts to scream.

The guards laugh, they laugh, at his pain and his misery and the hollowness within his chest. The laughing follows him to the room where the water fills the tank slowly. They make him watch.

“Yes?”

Tony blinks sluggish eyes at the scientist who had appeared in the room. He opens his mouth to say something, but then whatever he is going to say flies away from him as a curtain in his brain swings shut. It takes a moment, but then the word he's clung to this whole time winds its rope around Tony and plays him like a marionette. “No,” he says, the word a lifeline and a curse. “Never, don't you see? I'll never say yes, I'll never let you make me a monster again. I will do that on my terms, and my terms only. Do you. See?” His breathing gets turbulent as the guards pick him up and holds him over the water. “Do you see!” Tony roars and takes a deep breath. “I will not!”

The chill of the water hits him first, and then the loss of direction. In the water, up was simultaneously anywhere and nowhere. Tony struggles to the surface, as always, but then the cover is slipped over the top. When his lungs explode within him he opens his mouth and the water pours down his throat, gagging him and bringing bile and vomit, which he promptly chokes on.

Then they drag him out, Tony shaking and throwing up, his whole body cold and dripping and abused. Tears leak out from the corner of his eyes. Steve dances again at the edge of his vision, he spins round and round like a carousel. Faint threads of music tug at his ears and fill his mind with a sweet longing.

“Yes?”

“No,” Tony heaves, his hands clenching hard around himself. “Never.”

The guard's face spasms as Steve twirls away, then the butt of a gun hits him hard on the head and Tony crumples.

* * *

 

“Where do you think you are going?” Fury asks, face contorted in what appears to be anger born out of disobedience. Steve doesn’t care; he is long since passed obeying orders that he doesn’t approve of.

“We’re saving our teammate,” Clint says cheerfully from where he is strapping on his suit, but his innocent tone bellies something deeper and darker. His eyes flash as they watch Fury.

Steve knows that it is only because of Nick Fury that Clint is even here and an Avenger. Fury had been the one to give Clint a second chance and become something more than he was. Yet watching the way Clint inclines his head and bares his teeth ever so slightly, Steve knows now that if Fury stood in the way between getting to Tony Stark, the man who had tried so hard to bring them to grace, Clint would not hesitate to cut him down.

Steve looks at Fury with what he knows is the same expression, cold, hard anger fused together in an alloy simultaneously more brittle and stronger than alone. He can hear Natasha setting up in the cockpit and dares Fury to make a move.

Fury does not. “If you start an international incident,” he says instead, “I will disavow you. You were acting on your own vigilante ideas, and SHIELD and the American government will have had nothing to do with it. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Steve says, because he does and yet he will still go and do whatever it takes, go and bring back the soul of their team, the one that can be expected to save everyone when they couldn’t save themselves. He thinks about the number of times Tony has saved his life and knows that he will never be able to forfeit a chance to save him in return. There is, of course, the matter that Tony shares his bed and laughs at his jokes. The thought makes his heart hurt, so he pushes them aside.

Natasha pokes her head around the doorway, eyes narrowing at Fury. “All done. The flight will be approximately five hours long.”

“Let’s go,” Steve again dares Fury to stop them.  When he doesn’t, Steve turns around.

“Captain?” Fury stops him just as he is about to disappear from view. “Stark is under my command. You understand then, that I do not think him not worth saving?”

“Oh,” Steve says bitterly. “I do believe that. He is a person is he not? You think he is worth saving, not because you care about him, but because he is a liability, because he can be useful. You have nothing left in your heart.”

Fury doesn’t contradict him.

Steve leaves in a wind of cold anger and hatred.

* * *

 

They try a different approach today. They send a man with scars around his mouth and chin, and deep blue eyes.

The man pulls up two metal chairs and gestures for Tony to sit down on one. He smiles at him gently with chapped lips and lines around his eyes when he smiled. It was a pleasant smile.

“How have they been treating you?” The man asks. He has got an accent, one that Tony dimly recognises to be Icelandic, which he had guessed. “I hope not too badly. I did tell them to be gentle with you, you know.”

“You are the one calling the shots?” Tony asks, his own voice tired and slow compared to the elegant notes of the man.

“I am Arden,” the man bows his head in a gesture of respect that Tony does not return. “My father runs the company.”

“A company that hires mercenaries?”

“We believe in achieving our aims, Mister Stark. Surely one as ambitious as you should appreciate that,” Arden flashes a view of his teeth, which are perfectly white. “I used to admire you.”

“I wish you didn’t,” Tony spits and gazes flatly at him. “You’re a despicable human being.”

“And so were you.”

“Never like this,” Tony raises a hand to show his surroundings. “Not ever.”

“But you encouraged it, Mister Stark. Through your weaponry and your words and your technology. This is what you bred, Stark. You bred the worst of the worst and encouraged their growth like bacteria in a petri dish. The world was your oyster, and you decided to crack it.”

“Not anymore,” Tony chokes out, wondering how long it would take for him to wrap his uncovered hands around Arden’s neck. “I am an…” it takes him too long to remember. “Avenger. I save people.”

“If you drop a glass on the ground and crack it,” Arden smiles briefly. “And you try to superglue it back, the cracks will always show, and it would always be weak. You cannot fix a world you have already broken.”

“Watch me.”

“Tell me, Stark, what is one more crack in the fractures you’ve already made? Why must you suffer in this way? To prove a point?” Arden sighs. “You used to be better than this, you know. You used to be great, untouchable and volatile, like a missile. You’ve gone soft.”

“That happens when you meet Captain America,” Tony mumbles. His head lolls. To his side, Steve dances back into his vision, his face a mass of red. He dances with a brown-haired girl Tony cannot claim to remember, and they weave in and out of the massive room. The only sign that they aren’t real is when they meet an obstacle, they simply dance through it.  “The full force of American displeasure is something not to be trifled with.”

“Yes,” Arden makes a tut sound in the back of his throat. “I hear you share his bed.”

Tension immediately floods his veins, but he attempts not to look alarmed. Steve spins faster now, and Tony has to prevent himself from calling out a warning. “And how did you come by such a wonderful statement?”

Arden laughs, a warm note that Tony knows would have many girls falling at his feet. “You, Stark. You mumble to yourself, and sometimes you scream.”

“Do I?” Tony’s head lolls again, rolling this way and that. “I am afraid I am a rather big daydreamer. No, Captain America will never share my bed, nor anything with me,” and here his voice takes on such an undercurrent of bitterness and longing that it is almost believable. “Because I am an abomination. I am the wrecker of homes and a murderer. The Merchant of Death,” he laughs, high-pitched and demonic. “Would it make you feel better if I used Icelandic? Here I thought it would be no use, but hey, who would have known I’d need to use it against the leader of a criminal organisation? Stay in school, kids,” he laughs breathlessly and sucks in a gulp of air. “ _Kaupskipum dauða,_ that’s me. No, Steve will never share my bed, for I am the dark and the light and the fire, and I burn the heart out of everyone who touches me.”

Arden watches his head loll about on his neck as if it is incapable of supporting itself, and reaches out a hand to stop it from doing that. “I can change that,” he whispers, one hand on Tony’s neck. “I can make you great again. I can make you feared and revered, like the gods of old.”

“What are spetsnaz doing in Iceland?” Tony ask instead, his familiar cocky grin appearing on his face. “This isn’t your usual battleground.”

“We have many allies,” Arden blinks masterfully at him. He seems to be able to hold his gaze without ever trying. “You can be a part too. Then all this could stop, and you can go home. Is that not what you want?”

Tony blinks. His head fills with a buzzing that he can’t seem to clear. The curtain swings shut in his brain and suddenly he doesn’t remember why he even said no in the first place. All of this would stop, and he could go home, go home to Steve. However, even as he thinks it, Steve appears before him like a ghost and bends his face down to Tony’s ear. He whispers, “would you be able to look me in the eye if you do?”

“I would be alive,” Tony whispers back. Steve throws his head back and laughs, the curve of his throat like sculpted marble. “Isn’t that better?”

“Alive,” Steve still laughs. The brunette has her hand on his arm, and Tony finally recognises her as Peggy Carter. She used to come over to Stark Mansion before Howard had died and her memory turned to shreds. “There are worse things than being dead.”

“I want to go home,” Tony sags in his chair. He is aware that having mental conversations with visions is not the sign of perfect mental health, but here, looking at Steve’s blue eyes and the way he did not cast a shadow, it was a fix-it world that Tony had become addicted to.

“Pathetic,” Steve’s teeth are flecked with blood. He transforms into Howard who leers down at him and smiles hollowly, the blood running down his chin like a faucet. He gurgles through the tide. “You are no blood of mine.”

“Go to Hell,” Tony shouts, but whether it is directed at Arden or at his father is unclear. He shakes his head furiously, wondering how long it had been since he moved. He rips off Arden’s hand like it is a hot brand. “I am a monster only on my terms.”

“So be it,” Arden bows his head again. “Do not let it be said that I did not try to spare you.”

“I burn everyone who touches me,” Tony whispers back, a dark grin flitting across his face. He wonders if his teeth are flecked with blood too. “Just you wait, _þú sonur tík,_ because you’ll get the fire that is coming to you.”

“There is no one here to save you, _afvegaleiddur einn_ ,” Arden shakes his head. “ _Enginn er að koma fyrir þig_.”

“ _Rangur_ ,” Tony looks eerie in the half-light. “I am never alone.”

Arden merely sighs. “Your accent needs improving,” he says as he stands. “It is a disgrace. But because I am generous, you’ll have an hour to think this over.”

“Your face is a disgrace!” Tony roars after him, but he doesn’t turn around.

* * *

 

The plane is taking too long, and every second that passes weighs heavily on Steve. The burden is beginning to resemble Atlas carrying the world. In a corner, he can see Clint start to methodically whittle away at what is beginning to resemble an arrow shaft.

His heart feels like it is clawing its way out of his chest, the grief and remorse and bitterness all mixing together in a chaotic jumble, such that Steve can’t even identify individual emotions.

He’s glad for the support of his team, however. Clint looks up from his work and smiles briefly at Steve; a soldier’s smile that tells Steve he’d been in his position and lived. 

“Do you have a strategy?” Natasha asks after a while, and Steve blinks. He’d been so focused on getting back Tony he’d forgotten they’d actually have to storm a building they had no prior knowledge of.

“Fuck,” Clint says, voicing all their thoughts.

“No,” Steve says instead, flashing a look of disapproval at him. “Do we have surveillance photos?”

“Stark’s satellite homed in on his location when he activated the tracker,” Natasha doesn’t mention what they’re all thinking about, how wounded and hurt and broken Tony must have been to swallow his pride and actually ask for help. Steve shudders minutely. “We’ve got pictures.”

They pore over the pictures, Clint pointing out flaws in the building’s structure and Natasha tells them about Tony’s homing device, the way it connects in the comms. The faster it beeps, she says, the closer you are.

This is no different than the other black ops that Steve has done, but the fact that it was Tony’s life at risk that gave him pressure to perform. To get him out alive.

“We touch down in an hour,” Natasha tells them. “Stark’s stealth tech is the work of miracles. It is a wonder we haven’t been seen by any radars, and I’ve passed through several nation’s airspaces. We’re lucky he is on our side, because if he wasn’t-” She can’t bring herself to utter it, and she does not, instead she turn back to the cockpit and frowned in concentration. “He won’t say yes,” she says after a while, tilting her head slowly. “Right?”

“Yes!” Steve insists, his blue eyes flashing in the gloom. “He is better than that.”

The unspoken words hang in the air like a vapour, how Steve was putting so much faith in the hands of a weapons dealer, how he was placing so much trust in the care of the same person who made Ultron. “The past does not define us,” he is adamant. “And it never will.

* * *

 

Tony is awake when he hears the yelling, and the bodies dropping. For one, he simply couldn’t sleep at all, too afraid to even close his eyes, and secondly, his arc reactor had started to pulse.

The Avengers. He nearly cries with relief. Steve. Steve is here, and everything could be just fine. Briefly, he wonders if Steve came alone, and somehow, he hoped not. He’d like to think that the others cared enough about him to come too.

The doors to his cell burst open in a shattering of splinters and metal. Arden stands in the middle of the wreckage, wild-eyed and furious. His blue irises tremble. “How?” He breathes, and his breath comes in short pants. He backhands Tony across the face and yells in a decibel bordering on painful, “how did you tell them?”

“I am a genius,” he bares his bloody teeth in a gesture of dominance. “You can’t fight against me and expect to win.”

Two men grab his shoulders and haul him up, not realising that his hands were still free because of Arden’s visit. Arden had told him he wasn’t afraid of what he could do, and that underestimation would kill him. Tony edges his hands closer to the handle of the guard’s gun and thought morosely of his frankly adorable snub nosed .38 sitting unused at home.

“You have no weapons,” Arden hisses, low in his throat. “I can shoot you now.”

“Remember what I said about burning people?” Tony sways slightly. “I meant it like this.”

There is a solitary shout, and the unused power source in his chest flares up like a firework, a beacon against the night, and engulfs the unarmoured Arden in a wave of heat and laser so intense that his face was unrecognisable when it’d stopped.

The guards drop his arms. “Please,” one says, and the corners of his mouth quiver. “Family.”

“Give me your gun,” Tony motions impatiently. The guard hands it to him without question. “Leave.”

They turn to go, and as they leave Tony fires two shots in to their legs, such that they collapse. One screams.

“Sorry,” Tony says, not sorry at all.  He relishes in the betrayed look one of them gives him. “But you can’t go and re-join your friends., that would be terrible teamwork on my part.”

He then turns to Arden, who appears to be very happily dead, but Tony puts a few rounds in him anyway. One between the eyes, one through the jugular and a few in his chest. He had learnt from experience that it was better to be safe than to be sorry.

He steps over the guards, one of which is bleeding out onto the floor, and turns into the corridor. His arc reactor gives him a pulse when he turns left, so it is in that direction he walks, hands holding onto the gun like a lifeline.

* * *

 

Steve hits a guard over the head with his shield and actually relishes in the way he drops, legs crumpling on one another. After a moments hesitation, he yanks the gun away from his hands and shoves him unceremoniously into an abandoned room.

The assault was not going as quietly as expected, but then again he hadn’t expected very much. There is a shout and a man falls past Steve, hitting the ground with a sickening thud. An arrow sticks out of his throat, and Steve sends a silent thank you to Clint, for being able to kill when he couldn’t.

A man comes and he throws his shield, knocking him out at the same time he chooses to fire his gun. The shot goes wild, and hits a fuel cell that erupts into flame. Steve recoils from the heat and backs away down an adjacent corridor.

He swirls around when he hears footsteps and aims his shield. The beeping in his comms grows faster and faster, until he is perplexed by the whining because he isn’t moving. He realises then that it was Tony, moving towards him, and in a moment of faith decides not to throw his shield.

He thought right, as the figure who emerged from the corridor is a bedraggled man, with eyes the colour of whiskey and his beard a complete mess. His shirt is stained a red brown and ripped in the centre, showing a perfect gleaming circle of blue light. He carries a gun and walks with a limp, his feet mangled and bruised, as are his eyes, his hands, and by the way he breathed there is also broken ribs to contend with.

“Tony!” Steve calls, all sense of danger abandoned. Tony looks up sharply and sees Steve, half his face covered with his helmet and his shield at his side. Steve jogs toward him and anxiously checks him over, his touch light and soothing.

“What did we do on our not quite first date?” Tony asks, his eyes squeezed shut. He touches Steve like he doesn’t know if he’s real.

“Tony,” Steve says, but he is interrupted by his indignant bark.

“Answer the question, Rogers.”

“We danced. On the rooftop. You told me you’d haunt me if I fell off.”

“And then?”

“It rained,” Steve can remember it all clearly. “It rained and we got wet, and I made us go inside because there was lightning. You were completely soaked through and I gave you a t-shirt to wear because you said you were too lazy to go and change,” he pauses and cocks his head. “Speaking of which, did you ever give me back that shirt?”

“No,” Tony lets out a breath and laughs gently, patting Steve’s arm as if he can’t believe he is real. “No, I didn’t. The grey one, right?”

“Yes, you prick,” Steve grins down at him, and then puts an arm out for Tony to lean on. His gun clatters to the floor. “We’re getting out of here, come on.”

Steve turns around, then there are two loud bangs and he stumbles back from the recoil. Tony holds his smoking gun, a grim expression on his face. In front of him, holding a knife, is the now red splattered coat of a scientist.

“That’s my fuck you,” Tony hisses, nearly tumbling over. He trembles quietly, and Steve says nothing. “You should pay more attention to your surroundings, Captain.”

“I’ve got you,” he says instead, and holds tightly onto Tony as they make their way to the pickup zone. “I’m never getting Chinese food without you again, agreed?”

“Yes, mother,” Tony laughs, a painful wheezing that strikes a nerve. “I agree.”

“I love you,” Steve whispers, and looks down at him in a way that makes his throat constrict. “I nearly went mad.”

“I did go mad,” Tony tells him as they see Clint in the distance, jamming a knife into someone’s jugular. He nearly keels over at the sheer relief that he is going to be alright, that he didn’t say yes, and that the others came. “I had these hallucinations, and they were always of you.”

“Well, I am real,” Steve drops him a wink as Clint takes Tony’s other arm to support him. “You can’t dream up this level of awesome.”

“That’s my line,” Clint complains, and Tony laughs again. Here, in this bubble of loving and being loved, he is content. He didn’t need to be great or a god, all he ever needed was this.

**Author's Note:**

> TRANSLATION, ICELANDIC TO ENGLISH, COURTESY OF GOOGLE TRANSLATE
> 
> Kaupskipum dauða: Merchant of Death
> 
> þú sonur tík: you son of a bitch
> 
> afvegaleiddur einn: misguided one
> 
> enginn er að koma fyrir þig: no one is coming for you
> 
> rangur: wrong


End file.
